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Sisters meet after 40 years apart

Two sisters separated since childhood 40 years ago were recently reunited over a cup of coffee, a newspaper reported yesterday.

Ho Mei-yun (何美雲) and Fang Chuang-li (方壯莉) were born into a poor family that had 13 children. Hoping to give their kids a better life, their parents kept only eight of the children and gave the rest to better-off families, the Chinese-language United Daily News said.

Ho was put up for adoption when she was 11 months old. Her adopted parents allowed her to see her “nanny” — her mother — once a year. Ho later found out the “nanny” was her mother, so she eventually resumed contact with her biological family.

Fang, Ho’s younger sister, was given away when she was two months old. She heard from neighbors that she had been adopted and found out that her parents lived on Hami Road in Taipei, but her adopted parents barred her from looking for her parents.

Ho and Fang have been working as insurance agents at Cathay Life Insurance, but did not know each other as the company has nearly 30,000 employees across Taiwan and they worked in different departments, the report said.

Recently their company paid for outstanding insurance agents to go to Los Angeles for its annual meeting, which doubled as a bonus vacation. Ho and Fang sat in the same coach but did not know they were related.

On the day of departure, Ho bought a large cup of coffee. Seeing Fang and another colleague also wanted to buy coffee, she suggested the two share her cup of coffee because the cup was too large for her.

So they sat down to chat and asked one another’s age. Both Ho and Fang said they were older than their registered ages because they were adopted and their adopted parents did not register their correct birth date.

The more Ho and Fang recalled their childhood, the more they felt they were from the same family.

So Ho telephoned her eldest sister in Taiwan from Los Angeles airport to check on the details of the eighth sister, and concluded that Fang was No. 8.

When Ho brought the news to Fang, the two embraced while their colleagues stood around clapping.

The pair returned to Taipei several days ago and held a press conference on Wednesday to tell their story.

At the press conference, Fang said the theme of the company’s annual meeting in Los Angeles was “Change Your Life,” and that was certainly the case for her.
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